The Seven Secrets of Hermione Granger
by Clannadlvr
Summary: Hermione Granger is exactly who everyone imagines her to be. Except when she’s not. HBP compliant, future fic.
1. Dark Star

Disclaimer: Not for profit- for entertainment purposes only.

Spoilers: Through HBP, just to be safe.

A/N: Huge thank you to Kris and Larilee for the beta- you ladies rock! Part of the 7Spells challenge on live journal, assignment: Hermione Granger. Prompt: Supernova

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The biggest lie anyone ever told about Hermione Granger was really a misconception. But when the truth was so glaringly obvious to anyone who actually cared to look, misunderstanding and prevarication crossed at that funny intersection of gossip and hearsay.

As it was, the lie took on various forms. From casual conversations between former classmates at Wizarding Lamaze to Firewhisky-induced gabfests across a scarred and well attended tavern bar. At faculty meetings regarding detentions and passing times. In the dust-choked aisles of Flourish and Blotts. At Quidditch matches, Portkey locations, and kitchen sinks.

Put quite simply, Hermione Granger had no passion.

It was common sense, they said. She hadn't dated anyone publicly since her failed relationship with Ronald Weasley. Some might suppose that the public scrutiny over that breakup would have put Ms. Granger off of romantic liaisons, but even the _Tattler_ had found it difficult to print anything beyond "Harry Potter No Longer Third Wheel: Golden Trio a Trio Once More" as the split was rather amicable. So amicable, in fact, that the famously single witch was often seen in the company of her two best friends with no noticeable discomfort.

How boring, indeed.

But still, some would say, there was another possibility. It could just be that the brightest witch of her generation, never seen in the pursuit of eligible wizards, was actually not so "wizardly inclined." All those years of seeming celibacy post-Weasley could have been a cloak to shield prying eyes from orgiastic détentes with comely witches and double x-chromosome Quidditch players.

But that didn't really make sense either.

Maybe the Wizarding world wasn't as "progressive" as the Muggle world she'd come from and obviously still embraced, but preferring witches to wizards wasn't a crime. And especially with her standing and fame, weathering the public reaction to the news that Hermione Granger was gay would have been relatively easy. Still, the broom closet had remained firmly sealed.

So she wasn't actively heterosexual and there was no reason for her to be a closet homosexual, and truly there were no rumors of the sort that had any basis in confirmable fact…so what was she? Perhaps she was what she always had been, former Hogwarts classmates claimed: only concerned with her studies and now that the hollowed halls of Hogwarts were a few years behind her, research in her chosen field had become her focus.

Most assumed she was more content to converse with ancient tomes and distant runes scholars rather than pull a chap at a club. It was quite obvious that carnal passions simply held no allure. And probably passion of any sort was alien to a workaholic, self-concerned, brainiac book nerd.

While her work with the connection between Egyptian Hieroglyphics and magical formulas certainly occupied her time, it was a question of cool aesthetics and calculating conjecture, not obsession and driving need. The fit and fire of her youth, her flaming rows with Ronald Weasley and feats of courage against Voldemort and his compatriots once so prominent, was the final flash in a now cooling pan. Put quite simply, Hermione Granger was talented, educated, clinical, and thorough, but never passionate, tempestuous, or sexually driven.

There. That was the answer. The public continued to shake their heads, resigned to the fact that one of their most famous public figures was actually quite boring now that the survival of Wizarding culture no long longer rested partly on her shoulders.

But that misapprehension was ludicrous, completely without basis, and oddly, quite convenient for the witch in question.

How wondrous it was to burn bright in the dark, her light traveling so far and so fast, on the edge of bursting, and for the world at large to be so completely, and utterly, bamboozled.

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tbc... 


	2. Sibelius

**Sibelius**

Prompt 2: Violin, for the 7spells challenge on lj.

A/N: I wrote this while listening to Joshua Bell's performance of the Sibelius Violin Concerto in D Minor, Op. 47. Just…guh. Thanks again to Larilee and Kris for the wonderful betas!

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It pinched. It smarted. It soothed. The pluck…the slap…the caress. Pizzicato, ricochet, and portamento…each so indescribably, viciously elemental. 

She took the roller coaster ride of the messa di voce and reveled in the quick jolt of the martelé. The confusion of the détaché was a miracle in her normal existence of clear cut answers and finite ideals.

And when that tremolo sounded, she found herself poised on the brink of an abyss…its pulsating depths so dark and seductive and perfect and rare that when she hit the ground…

…she was intangibly whole.

In the aftermath, her thighs quivered in fevered delight, her mind cleared of extraneous matter, and her heart sang. Her haphazardly ordered world of deadlines, schedules, and flashes of insight distilled on a perfect cadence of understanding.

Simply put, Hermione Granger had learned that when life became too systematic, there wasn't anything a good concerto couldn't solve.

Other wizards might find a magically powered phonograph the amplifier of choice, but she wasn't so antiquated. She knew that real, powerful tones could only be transmitted by an orchestra on a grand stage, the shell of the performance space reverberating an ocean of sound…

Or, by a top quality cd player.

More often than not, being raised as a Muggle had its benefits. Hermione doubted that most wizards had ever heard of a Bose audio system, much less the benefits of surround sound.

But she had, and in her modest flat in Notting Hill, her carefully constructed Silencing Charms buffered the outside world from the thundering roar of her orchestra.

She loved the way it made her walls shake, the crescendos her own personal form of demolition. She loved the way it eradicated her frustrations of the day, each mountain crumbling down into a molehill that could be easily conquered.

And she loved the way the vibrations of a suspended C sharp could push her to the brink of oblivion, perched on the edge between the most glorious tension and resolution.

She could sit on the overstuffed cushions of her divan and let herself be enraptured by the way the soloist existed within and without that saturated wall of sound. How he could exist in his own personal world and yet breathe in time with the orchestra. This was an opposition of passion and order that she understood all too well. She could sit and, in that moment, understand what it meant to exist there and everywhere at once.

There were times when she almost feared the emotion the three movements evoked within her. Times when the tensions of that otherworldly cadenza were almost too much to bear and she existed only for the recapitulation. When the Adagio gripped her soul and threatened to expose every clandestine tear. And when, in that final Allegro, she rose in a torrent of arpeggios and double-stops and shuddered as the violinist's bow sang with her secret truths.

Perhaps it was all too much for one Witch to handle.

But she loved the fact that there was still a sort of magic that she couldn't completely conquer, that she couldn't completely explain away with Arithmancy and Runes. And in that mystery, she could do what no foolish wand waving had ever achieved.

In music, Hermione Granger could revel in her imperfections.

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tbc... 

A/N 2: Yes, yes, I am a musician, but not a violinist, so I apologize for any potential misinterpretations. I took from my own musical knowledge for most of this chapter, but all other information I found here on the web.


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